How To Knock Down Your Insurance Costs For Your Employees

Insurance costs are a sore subject all around these days. When you run a large or small septic company, it’s probably on your mind even more so. You want to be able to offer high quality insurance to your employees at a fair cost to your bottom line and for their benefit as well. The benefits package you offer your workforce needs to contain a few standard items, so that you don’t constantly hear complaints from your team about how subpar their insurance is performing for them.
Here’s the real deal; business health insurance plans aren’t cheap. That’s just a fact. They are going to take a little bit of your revenue, but it’s vital to your employees that you find a great plan for them that also doesn’t take a huge bite out of their paychecks. You’ll retain them much longer and they will be more satisfied with what you can provide for them as part of their employee benefits package. With that being said, here are a few ways you can knock down your insurance costs for your employees.

Look Into Small Group Health Insurance Plans
“Joining a group health insurance plan migh tlower costs, depending on how many people you have working at your company. If you have less than 10 employees, you can still look into this by partnering with another local septic business. That way, the more employees you have going into the plan, the lower the overall costs will be.
Plus, if you have 50 employees or less, you can look at Healthcare.gov to offer your employees “SHOP.” This program stands for Small Business Health Options Program. You can join this program anytime of the year, which is perfect if you want to change over from a more expensive plan.

Explore What a Health Savings Account Means
Health savings accounts (HSA) are high deductible insurance programs, combined with a tax-free savings account. The goal by using a program like this is to make the monthly premiums much less than traditional insurance plans. When you do this, insurance costs on average are 25 percent less than regular plans. Plus, the deposits your employee’s make into their savings accounts are also tax deductible, which can in turn net them a higher tax return each year.

Shop Around For Better Priced Insurance
It doesn’t pay to stay with the same insurance plan that’s just too expensive year after year. It’s just lazy to not do the research on better insurance plans. By shopping around and researching different insurance plans, you are more likely to find one that is lower. Insurance is a dog-eat-dog world, so the companies make changes all the time to stay competitive price-wise. Don’t fall into the trap of keeping high cost insurance when there are many lower cost options out there for your company to start using instead.

Ask Your Employees What is Important To Them
Maybe you can take off spouses for various health plans. Many people nowadays have two-income families, so you might not need to offer family plans because your worker’s spouse can get insured with their job. Individual plans are obviously much cheaper for everyone involved.
Another way to lower costs is to eliminate vision and dental. Check with your employees first to see if they would mind this decrease in coverage, but if it means much lower insurance costs for them, they might take you up on it. Some people just want the basics supplied with health insurance, so it’s less out of their paycheck each time.

Implement Wellness Plans
If all employers cared more about their workforce’s health, insurance cost would naturally go down. Offer things to your employees, like free health screening days, smoking cessation programs, and even yearly flu-shots. Many insurance companies offer these screening days complimentary to their policy holders. Just ask your insurance provider what kind of wellness benefits they can bring to the table for your workers. Keeping people healthy will in the long run reduce your insurance costs significantly.

Please follow and like us: